Today, Steam doesn’t achieve much more sitting in your system tray than shortening start-up times. But that residency is a hugely important resource for developers of coming-generation MMOs and user-driven games, to the point of outright success or failure. Why, and how?

While Monday’s Steam update may have been aimed at getting the final beta phase of Friends 3.0 out into the open, it also saw the quiet release of Steam Media Player. Also, a new system driver, SteamDrv.sys, has been found in the Steam folder.